Coca Cola: The Real Story Behind the Real Thing

Justine Lavoie

10/26/11

Business and Society

I learned that Coca Cola was the number one drink brand and everyone loved it. They kept their business strong and steady because it was a special flavor that everyone enjoyed. At first they had actual cocaine in Coca Cola but they had to change it and take it out. They even changed their commercials so many times. Coca Cola had nothing to worry about until Pepsi came on to the scene than from that moment on they became rivals. The reasoning for Coca Cola changing their ingredients was because they needed some change and everyone was enjoying Pepsi more. That didn’t end very well; everyone was very upset and there were so many complaints on it that they finally decided to change it back to their old ways.

Coca Cola started becoming bigger than ever after they started having their own shaped bottles and they started buying other companies and making different products. Coca Cola really wants to know what people like and how to please them with the next big thing. They are very famous for their brand everyone around the world knows who they are and what their product is all about. The people that work there make it their job to have Coca Cola advertised everywhere they can possibly advertise it. They even make sure that when they get their products delivered they are the only people that handle the delivery right to the shelf.

Coca Cola today is still trying to improve their products because there is a lot more competition in these’s days than back then. In this day and age everyone is getting bigger and bigger because of all the sugar they put in drinks. People have tried to tell Coca Cola that they are getting fat because they are drinking their product; this is not true at all. The president of Coca Cola said himself that their product isn’t bad for you, you just can’t take a lot in all in one day than that’s when it becomes unhealthy.

Coca Cola

Shawn Shannon

Professor Fluery-Lawson

Business and Society

26 October 2011

How do you sell a product? With a great marketing scheme of course. When you have a great marketing scheme you can sell just about anything, Coca Cola in a prime example of that. Coca Cola is a drink, just a basic concoction of water, sugar and artificial flavors. But yet the company is one of the biggest in the world, being worth over sixty seven million dollars. Coca Cola has some of the best marketing strategies, which is the biggest reason that they are doing so much better then all the competition. In the book we talk a lot about risk and reward. Coca Cola is a prime example. They take the risk of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad campaigns. But bringing in a lot more revenue then what they have in expenses has rewarded Coca Cola. This is how they make such a large profit.

Coca Cola tells people that their product doesn’t only quench thirst, but it creates happiness. The video that I chose is a prime example of showing this. Although the commercial is in another language and I can’t understand what they are saying, I do however understand the point of the ad. When the little kid first sees the Coca Cola when the man rides by on the bike his body language shows that he is in aw. His jaw drops and his eyes open up wide. Then when he sees the women putting the Coca Cola on the table for dinner he starts to try to escape from his crib to go and get some. Then the commercial goes to the nighttime where the child is supposed to be sleeping. But he can’t sleep because he cant get the Coca Cola off of his mind. His mom comes and gets him and brings him downstairs where he sees a few members of his family eating dinner and drinking some Coke. The boy dazes off and dreams about the mouth watering Coke. The next day when they go to have lunch the child finally gets to have some Coca Cola and share the joy with his whole family. The commercial is trying to show that no matter how old you are that you can enjoy a cold Coca Cola. It also promotes happiness and shows that a bottle of Coke can bring a family together. Overall I think that this advertisement is very persuasive and probably got a lot of people to purchase their product. I now understand how just a basic drink can turn into a billion dollar industry due to a persuasive marketing scheme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6O2F2H4avM

Guy DePlacido
October 25, 2011
Business and Society
Professor Fleury-Lawson
Coca Cola
. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xffOCZYX6F8
I picked this commercial because it is such a widely known commercial. They have played it in Super Bowl Ads and it has been played on the television many times. The reason they had Joe Green in it is because he had this big reputation for being angry all the time. That is where he got his nickname of Mean Joe Green. I think this is a very effective ad because it makes people think that Coca Cola can make even the meanest person happy. This ad was funny, had a celebrity in it and had a kid in it. It speaks to all types of audiences and I am sure it worked out very well for Coca Cola.
It is very beneficial for Coca Cola to run this ad because I am sure it made a lot of money but it is also a very expensive ad to make and air during the Super bowl. “Risk is the chance an entrepreneur takes of losing time and money on a business that may not prove profitable” (pg 5). This is the same for spending money on commercials. Buying a time slot for a Super bowl ad is very expensive and it starts at like 3.5 million dollars for a thirty second clock. This is a very risky move for some businesses but seeing as Coca Cola is such a profitable business, the risk is a little less for them. I believe that the risk referenced in the text is very similar to the risk that Coca Cola took. Overall, I think that this ad was a very good idea and proved very profitable.

Coca Cola is a 67 billion dollar empire, sold in 206 countries. Coca Cola is the main beverage that every one enjoys. This beverage is seen around the world. The textbook states that marketing is the activity, set of institutions and processes for creating, communicating,delivering, and exchanging offerings with value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Marketing lessons that can be learned from Coca Cola experiences is to stay with your product and follow through with your idea.Coca Cola decided to change their formula in the Coca Cola bottle and everyone reached negatively. They learned from their mistake and changed the formula back to the their original one. Coca Cola is a well known product and when they changed their product, society reacted loudly. One women called complaining that they took away her childhood, since all she drank was Coca Cola as a child. In the text it talks about customer orientation which is finding out what the customers want and then providing it. That is exactly what Coca Cola did, Coca Cola provided a formula that made consumers want more. Even when they made a mistake, Coca Cola came back dramatically. They stuck with the product that sold, and the product that customers loved, which was the original Coca Cola. The text also talks about profit orientation which means focusing on the goods and services that will earn the most profit. Coca Cola is a wide known empire, and all of their employees are focused on their product. They don't only look at the profit their making but they make sure that their costumers are happy and are coming back for more. Important marketing lessons that we can learn from Coca Cola are to always keep your product if its selling, don't try t change it. Also, do whatever it takes to keep your customers coming back for more. Another lesson is to create a product or good for society, that way it will sell and be successful. Coca Cola is an extremely successful business and I see them expanding even more throughout the world.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola had been one of the top beverage selling companies in the world. Coca-Cola has been a mix of both the representative for Santa Clause in the winter and the summer it represents the perfect refreshment. In terms of the winter all of the bottles have Santa on them and all of the commercials around winter time are a mix of Santa and the Polar Bears. All of the Santa commercials show Santa as a man who is exhausted and is replenished by a Coca-Cola. In this commercial happiness seems to come from the drink. The message they want the audience to see is that when you drink a Coca-Cola it is like Christmas morning and it seems to make everyone want their product.

This strategy is marketing and they are marketing there product as a supplier of happiness. In the summer time the Coca-Cola is a sign of refreshment. This shows people enjoying their drink in the hot summer. So in both videos they describe two complete different time zones but the one common thread is the enjoyment you receive from drinking a Coca-Cola. This enjoyment leads people to buy the product based on the happiness they see from the people in the commercial.    

                From personal experience Coca-Cola is something that is a very enjoyable beverage that based on taste alone can create a sense of happiness in you. I also know that last week we watch the video on the Coca-Cola Company, it made my craving for a Coke that much stronger as the video went on. Finally when the video and class ended I went straight to lunch and got a Coke. I believe that from watching all the information about the Coca-Cola enabled me to recall memories of happiness and created craving for Coke. So I believe that from personal experience that the message they are conveying is being delivered. Although it may not seem like it is out in the fore-front when you recall memories of summer or Santa you can imagine a Coke in your hands and then your craving is back.

Coca-Cola: How Marketing Is Done

Coca-Cola is one, and will always be one of the best-selling tonic distrubitors that this world has ever seen. Since Coca-Cola is great tasting you would assume that they would be one of the best selling there ever was, but in reality Coca-Cola would be nothing without their marketing team. In the beginning there was only Coca-Cola, no one could touch their fast growing company. To make them diffrent from the other competitors, Coca-Cola made new and improved bottle that had more curves than other companys. This made Coca-Cola diffrent, and people loved it. Soon enough Coca-Cola had a legitimate competitor, Pepsi-Cola. Pepsi-Cola began to catch up to sales of Coca-Cola, as a competing business Coca-Cola decided to change its own recipe to it's soda. Coca-Cola beleive by changing its own recipe and attempting to approve it, they would soon out sell Pepsi-Cola. As soon as Coca-Cola did so, they instantly became swarmed with complaints. Beleiving this was just a phase, Coca-Cola attempted to wait it out, even though their sales were plummeting. In my opinion this is where Coca-COla went wrong. In my case they should of listened to the consumer earlier. I can understand if they waited a little time because consumers wouldn't like change, but I believe they waited too long and lost the trust of their consumers. The stakeholders should always be a priority to any company. "Stakeholders are all the people who stand to gain or lose by the policies and activities of a business and whose concerns the business needs to address"(P.6). I beleive if Coca-Cola had heard about this, they should of went back to the original as soon as they could. Coca-Cola realized the issue and went back to the original recipe. Marketing has always been strongly present in Coca-Cola sales and took advantage of every oppurtunity they could. During the holidays they would associate Coca-Cola with Santa Clause, what child doesn't love Santa?  Soon, Coca-Cola came up with a great idea. Coca-Cola partnered up with anoter company to create an ultimate soda machine. This machine allowed ultimate customization of any Coca-Cola beverage. This includes such flavors being added such as grape, orange, vanilla, cherry and much more. Not only does this machine does this for the consumer, it also acts as a huge information database for the company. This machine literally records every drink it gives out, and how it is customized and sends it back to the Coca-Cola headquarters. Coca-Cola then studies this information, what this information can provide is what combinations are most popular amoungst consumers. With most of these combinations not on the shelves, if one particular combination is favored, they then could sell this in stores. Coca-Cola is labeled as Americas drink. Every thing they do there is a thought behind to to improve the company, this is most shown in commericals. Commercials influence everyone in one way or another and is a very important marketing skill, and Coca-Cola understands how to use marketing to better the company.

Coca Cola in college

Now this commercial has plenty of pros and cons to it, especially to kids that are in college like me. At the beginning of the commercial it says that this commercial is at a college campus and knowing that it is a Coca Cola commercial, you know it is going to be good. So a girl buys a Coca Cola and then right before she leaves the machine another drink pops outs and then another and another. When you are watching the video it gives you a good feeling inside watching the drinks pop out because if that were you in the video you would be so happy receiving all those free drinks. Then another person goes up to the machine to get a drink and she gets flowers and a drink and what girl does not love to get flowers every now and then. As the commercial goes on with the Coca Cola machine giving out free food and things like that and you cant help but smile and wish this happened at your school. Coca Cola is very good with making there customers feel very good about themselves when they watch there commercials and then make you want to buy you so you can feel good about your self. However, when there is a good there is always a bad that follows right behind it. Now from this commercial I can not see many of the cons from this commercial other than that this commercial really happening you to is very slim to none. You have to put yourself in a fantasyland and let yourself believe that this could happen to you when you go to a Coca Cola machine next time. All the commercial does is give the customer false hope that this would ever happen again because they know that Coca Cola is just trying to make themselves look like there the greatest product to ever walk this earth by giving out free food and drinks. Coca Cola is just trying to get Pepsi uses to change there minds and think that Coca Cola is really cool to drink when they watch the commercial and should try there product next time they buy a drink.

Video would not pop up so here is the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqT_dPApj9U

Coca-Cola Classic "Mean Joe Green"

Alexandra M. Euglow
Professor Fleury-Lawson
Business and Society
25 October 2011

Coca-Cola’s Iconic Commercials

When talking and thinking about advertisements you truly remember or even jingles you remember, there are very few. Coca-Cola is product and company that proves that wrong. Coca-Cola has many iconic commercials and jingles. One iconic commercial is found on YouTube.com. This commercial is the one from 1979 with “Mean Joe Green”. This commercial is considered to be one of the all-time best Super Bowl commercials. Charles Edward Greene, known as “Mean Joe Green”, was a former all-pro American football defensive tackle. He played for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the NFL. Joe Greene’s nickname, "Mean Joe Greene" stems from his alma mater, the University of North Texas' athletic teams, which are nicknamed the Mean Green. Greene appeared in this famous commercial for Coca-Cola which aired during the 1980 Super Bowl, and won an award for best advertisement of the year. This commercial first aired in late 1979 and was part of the "Have a Coke and a Smile" advertisement campaign. A child (Tommy Okon) gives an injured Greene a Coke, prompting "Mean" Joe to smile and toss the kid his team jersey. The heartwarming commercial became immensely popular by the 1980 Super Bowl. The pros of this commercial are that it had a jingle that was catchy and it made “Mean Joe Green” smile. This touched people’s hearts because they love when a child can make someone smile and by the young boy giving Greene his Coca-Cola, Greene smiled at him in return. It leaves people with a happy feeling inside. The one major con to this commercial is if people did not watch football or know who “Mean Joe Green” is, then they would not understand the essence of the commercial. “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large” (pg. 246). Clearly this commercial was a great marketing choice because it hit each of these points and truly touched people. In the Coca-Cola Movie that we watched in class said the advertisements had to hit key elements. This commercial has a great story behind it, a jingle and a deeper meaning which hits three key elements to drawing people in. All in all, I believe this commercial is a Coca-Cola classic hit.

http://youtu.be/xffOCZYX6F8

Steve Copeland-Coca Cola

Steven Copeland

        There are many sodas that we Americans drink daily such as Sprite, Pepsi, and also Ginger ale. One soda is preferably preferred by many and that is Coca Cola. Coca Cola has been around for hundreds of years only to increase their satisfying taste and attract more and more people to purchase their product, but their taste isn’t the only thing that has people going. “Its dominance must may really be based on something else…brilliant marketing.” Marketing has proven to be a necessity to the success of companies such as Coca Cola. “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” (346) For example, one of Coca Colas commercials that caught my attention shows the viewer a sleepwalker who rises up in his tent and goes on a sleepwalk across the safari savanna. He is pulled subconsciously by his thirst and need for a delicious bottle of Coca Cola. He shows that this beverage is worth braving the trunks, jaws, and sharp teeth of the safari night to enjoy a nice cold coke. This commercial was first shown during Super Bowl XLIV. A pro for this commercial is that it is an advertisement you won’t forget after watching it because it is such a bizarre situation. That is what successful marketing is all about. Another pro is that it shows how delicious this beverage is without even tasting it. If I man is willing to walk through the dangers of the safari at night just for bottle of Coke, it must be a taste to die for. I personally believe that there are no cons to this commercial. It was a well thought out advertisement and surely helped the company of Coca Cola receive an increase in revenue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkHA2pf1gvc

Coca Cola Marketing

Sean Coates

Business & Society

26 October 2011

                Coca Cola has an extremely strong marketing plan and many different advertising campaigns.  In the video it said that people are impulse shoppers and decide what they are going to get within the first five seconds of looking.  Coca Cola has become such an icon in the beverage industry that many people go straight to the Coke in the store.  Its main competitor being Pepsi which does have a strong market share, but nothing like Cokes.  Coca Cola has made many memorable commercials because of their dedication to success.  They make an amazing product that brings happiness to people’s lives and they have an equally strong advertising campaign that reminds people of that happiness.

In the commercial I found on youtube it is a “feel good” ad.  It starts out showing people that look like they are not where they want to be during Christmas.  Then santa has a Coke and shakes a snow globe and everything magically gets better.  Everyone gets what they were looking for on Christmas; families are reunited, people fall in love, and a child gets a dog.  The commercial is going off the fact that when you open a coca cola you are opening happiness as well.

Coca Cola Commercial 1960's

When you go into any fast food restaurant you will
have the choice of getting a Coca Cola for a beverage. When you walk around the
city or in ads you will see Coca Cola adds everywhere and they do that for a
reason. They advertise their product to catch the eye of the consumers so that
they will have an advantage over their competition, Pepsi. Till this day I believe
they have the upper hand over their competitors and have great ideas of
advertising. The pros of this commercial are that this commercial shows all the
sports arenas and activities that people do every day. Like the Dunkin Donuts
add, they say that people need this drink to keep going and refresh them. It shows baseball players, NASCAR, golfers,
swimmers, and horseback riders drinking this after a game or race or whatever
the sport is, they drink it after to be refreshed. “The taste you never get
tired of, always refreshing, that’s why things go better with coke after coke
after coke”. People always choose Coca Cola because they know it is going to have
that taste that they love and it makes them refreshed to keep going on in their
day. When I watched the movie it said
that the company does its deliveries themselves so that they place it right in
the eye sight of the buyers and by doing that the sale counts go up. Also in
the movie is tells us about the exportation to foreign companies and how they
differ from us. Exporting is “selling products to another country” (pg. 61).
Coca Cola expands its product all around the world and the commercial shows the
types of people it does that too.

The cons of this commercial is that they don’t have
any words till the last few seconds and that could lose the consumers
attention. When the commercial starts it does have sound, but they song is not
very catchy and does not stick in my head. I believe that a catchy song or phrase
that gets stuck in peoples head is the key to catching their attention. Also
this commercial was popular back in the 1960’s, but if you were to bring this
back, this would not sell the product because we are in a new era. Over all
their commercials do catch the eye of the consumers and I do believe they have
great business statics.

Coca-Cola

Hillary White
Professor Fleury-Lawson
Business and Society
October 25, 2011



Coca-Cola is a 67 billion dollar empire. There are 500
different brands and is 123 years in the making. The commercial I decided to
write about is where this young guy is sleeping in a hut out in the safari and
sleep walks all across the safari and then comes across a fridge with Coca-Cola
in it and he reaches for it, takes a sip and just enjoys it.
I thought this commercial was just decent advertising. If I
was someone who had no idea what Coca-Cola was, then after watching this
commercial I would still be confused. It didn’t really describe how it taste
and how it would refresh you. In marketing, you need to very specific and clear
when your advertising your products so your viewers will get a good feel for
what message you are trying to put out there for them and why they should buy
your product. The idea is to convince the viewer to buy your products and this
commercial wasn’t too convincing to me.
The pros of this commercial were that it did have some good
points. Like the sound the guy made when he drank the bottle of Coca-Cola, it
made it seem that the drink was very refreshing. I also noticed that when he
was walking through the safari all the animals were trying to catch him and
just see what he was doing. It shows their curious. This commercial doe’s make viewers
curious to see what is Coca-Cola and how does it taste. That’s another good pro
to this ad. This ad also has very good music to it and can really catch someone’s
attention. Also just by having music and animal noises can really catch a viewer’s
attention instead of using words. Not everyone likes those boring commercials
were its just two people ranting on and on about the product they are trying to
advertise. Overall I thought this commercial had some good points and had some
good eye catchers, although I do think they should have facts about Coca-Cola
to make this commercial even better.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is one of the world's most known companies. But that is not too shocking to hear when the entire empire is worth more than $67 billion dollars. The company not only focuses on the quality of their product, but the quality of their marketing, as well. "Marketing is
the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering,
and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large" (346).Which was understood in the video, the company uses commercials and signs to help customers "remember a good time and warm feeling," while drinking their beverage. Coca-Cola tries to lean their commercials towards a"playful, humorous, and lighthearted" feel, too. And those feelings can be shown through the 2010 Coca-Cola commercial entitled "Snow Globes".
The commercial is focused around Christmas time and uses Santa Claus its main subject. The pros about this video are the use of a jingle, Santa, and family and friends. The advertising in this video does not only promote the drink, but it also promotes the feelings of happiness, family, and friends that can be related to the drink. "Most companies emphasized selling and advertising
in an effort to persuade consumers to buy existing products" (348). And that is exactly what Coke is doing in this commercial. They are making the consumers believe they will feel the same way as the characters in the commercial if they purchase the drink, which at a marketing standpoint is a great pro.
The only con about this particular commercial is that there is a lot going on.
There are families, friends, Santa, a snow globe, a song, and coke itself. The
watcher can get a little distracted by all of the excess throughout the video
and forget what the video's actually purpose is. Other than that Coke's video
does reach out towards its consumers and is a positive marketing technique.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TMwBFK2qHI&noredirect=1

Coca-Cola by Carter Rouleau

This Coca-Cola commercial, entitled "Open Happiness", was released in 2011.  This Coke ad has many Pros and very few cons in my opinion.  In this ad the people are all partying in the ocean with coca-cola.  They let the audience know that today is a new day and that you should spend it drinking coke and partying with friends.  This commercial is supposed to make the consumer happy and to associate happiness with coca-cola.  The music is also very joyful and hip.  The lyrics in the song also help to create the mood.  The only cons that I could think of is confusion.  If I were to watch this commercial for the first time, I would be confused by the coca-cola bottle that is blowing air and making them flout.  Although I do think that this is a good commercial and I think that it will attract more customers. 

Samantha MacMillan

Coca-Cola has been a great role model to go by in the marketing world. With their constancy and persistency, they have made out something so simple as a bottle of soda to be a world-renowned icon known by all as, Coca-Cola. The reason why they are still to this day so successful is because of their strategic marketing techniques that they use. Not only is this key but they also are very good at listening to the consumers’ opinions and getting a good sense of what new stuff they are demanding. As the book mentions, “Every manufacturing and service organization in the world should have a sign over its door telling its workers that the customer is king”. I believe that the Coca-Cola industry lives by this motto. When they decided to give Coca-Cola a new formula and put it out in public, they were astonished at how many people rejected it. They received many complaints about how the soda tasted bad and how the company took away a little piece of someone’s childhood all because they changed the ingredients in the soda. Because the organization was not stubborn and egotistic, they listened closely to the demands of their customers and happily changed the Coca-Cola formula back to its original as soon as possible. They are considered a great marketing company because they obeyed their “king”, or in other words their consumers. The Coca-Cola company keeps making their customers happy even to this day where they are giving customers the option of specializing their soda from a touch screen soda machine. This new invention lets people explore all the different products that are under the Coca-Cola industry. It allows customers to pick what type of drink they want and even what flavor. Coca-Cola is definitely marketing well to today’s new society where individuality and variety are becoming more and more important factors.

The other part that the company does extremely well is to tie in their logos everywhere and in every which way. Sometimes Coca-Cola used songs and jingles to catch a consumer’s attention on the radio or television. Other times, they associated Santa Claus with holding a Coca-Cola as the source of his energy during and after a long expedition around the world. This caught the eye of many children around the world that celebrated Christmas as well as a good idea for the parents who stayed up late wrapping presents. The many types of products that they used to put their logo on were genius as well. Customers can find the Coca-Cola logo on toy cars, posters, pins, calendars, pocket mirrors, pens, bottle cap belts, etc. They are constantly coming up with new ideas for advertisement to get consumers to see their product more in the world and to associate it with the good things in life.

Coke

Rich Smith
Bus & Society
Professor Fluery-Lawson
10/25/11
The Magic in Coca Cola
Coca Cola has been a successful and expanding business since the time it originally opened. Coca Cola went through some major high points and low points throughout the life of its existence. Some of its marketing ploys where always trying to be innovative by always finding a way to vamp up its product. For a long time Coca Cola was the only leading soda producer around, then around the 1960’s Pepsi made its first step into the competition with Coke.
For the first time Coke was in a decline; Pepsi was taking over as the lead seller between Coke and Pepsi. At this point Coke was in a pickle and decided to do a mass change to their product; change the flavor of Coke. This was the worst but also the best decision Coke had ever made, after months of Coke’s new flavor many discovered that now Coke was even worse and decided to no longer purchase Coke. This gave Coke the chance to comeback; and it did, they came out with Coca Cola classic. This was by far the best marketing ploy they have ever done, everyone wanted the old coke back and that’s what they got. Sales went rocketing through the roof and this is what they needed.
From this point Coke is always finding new ways to keep their market coming. The latest and greatest is their new automatic dispenser that offers hundreds of different sodas and its flavors. This machine not only offers all these flavors but now they can keep track of how many times each specific type is used and when. This is a new age of technology; this yet again gives coke the upper hand to the market. I’ve learned from this that being innovative and always giving the public what they want, the outcomes are endless. Give the people what they want; cause they people is who keep you running.

Always Coca Cola

2. Coca Cola is the largest beverage company in the world, with locations in 206 countries and over 500 products sold worldwide. This is due largely because of their genius marketing. The book defines marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”(Pg 346) Even a company of this magnitude has a tough competitor, Pepsi-Cola. Sales started dropping after consumers started drinking more juices, teas, and energy drinks. This could be blamed on the negative light that the media had been shining on soft drinks saying how unhealthy they are. Obesity rates are higher than ever with 1 in every 4 adults being overweight. You can’t blame America’s obesity on soda alone but it still hurt the soda industry. Coca Cola admits that the company themselves are to blame because they got arrogant according to the video. They started to rely on the power of their brand name and the products they already had. Instead they should have been creating new ones and trying to find better and cheaper ways to run the company. You can learn from Coca Cola’s mistakes not to take anything for granted in business because the market will turn on you if you don’t give them what they want. A more positive lesson you can learn from Coca Cola is that having things very unique to your company will greatly help your sales. For Coca Cola that could be the curved bottle shape that they own, their classic logo, catchy jingles that have lasted for decades, or the fact that everyone has memories they can associate with Coke. They use these trademarks to their advantage when marketing. Coca Cola is famous for their great marketing thanks to all their marketing research. Marketing research is “the analysis of markets to determine opportunities and challenges, and to find the information needed to make good decisions.” (Pg 354)

Coca Cola the Real Story Behind the Real Thing

Coca Cola the Real Story Behind the Real Thing

The Coca Cola Company is the largest beverage company in the world. Coca Cola is a 67 billion dollar company, sold in 206 different countries. It started with just one beverage but now has over 500 different brands in the company. The most recognizable flavor in the company is of course the original “Coca Cola” or “Coke”. This is a simple beverage but to the company “in order to succeed their products needed to be more than just beverages, they had to be reminders of good times and warm feelings, so each of us would buy these beverages again and again.” (Video) The company does this through incredible marketing. They need to do this because of their extreme competition, mostly with the Pepsi Company, whom, like Coca Cola, has billions of dollars and an extensive line of products that include: sodas, energy drinks, juices, and water.

According to the video half of all shoppers decisions to buy something is an impulse and made in the first 5 seconds of being in an aisle. Coca Cola has built a research lab to find out how they can make shoppers impulse buy on Coca Cola products. They use mostly memories to help consumers buy their product: like the name of a sports park, or an athlete drinking a coke after a victory.

After finding out how Coca Cola conducts marketing, I searched YouTube to see if their commercials use the same tactic. I found this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-STkFCCrus). The commercial features two enemy soldiers guarding their borders vigorously. After a few dirty looks and grunts at each other one of the guards opens a coke, then the other becomes jealous, after seeing this the other guard offers the enemy guard a coke and extends his boarder for the other to grab the bottle. After reaching down and grabbing it the two enemy guards put their differences aside and enjoy the coke together. The final message is the coke logo and it says, “open happiness”. I think this commercial shows perfectly how Coca Cola markets their products. As a sign of happiness, they do this by showing happy memories and happy moments involving the Coke product. This is how they get so many people to buy their products. I think this is brilliant by the Coke marketing team and I think because their products are so good and so greatly marketed that they will continue to be the largest beverage company in the world for a long time.